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 OD
THE FATHER had prepared the world for the advent of his
Son, working out the mystery of his
purpose through the ages before Christ's birth
that he would bring everything
together under Christ, as head, everything in the heavens
and everything on earth.[1]
 From
the moment the soldier opened Jesus' side with a lance, his
death on the cross began the world's reconciliation;
in his own person he killed the
hostility.[2] Through his
cross, the Lord conciliated races and cultures, economic
classes, and men and women.[3]
Christ's work of reconciliation continued relentlessly
through the next two millennia, and the cross is drawing the
Church together again at the dawn of the third
millennium.
Introduction
How
can mankind encounter God with indifference? His infinite
presence demands either submission or resistance from each
person, and from every culture. Submission leads to true
religion and further revelation while misunderstanding leads
to worldly inspirations (personal and cultural). Worldly
inspirations contain elements of reality, which is not
surprising considering their ultimate origin in awareness of
God's presence. Worldly ideals contain elements which
confuse and distract from the Church's life and mission.
However, God himself protects and disciples his Church and
the gates of Hell will never prevail against her.
Worldly
inspirations lead from one to another in continual rejection
of the Lord's sovereignty. They do not 'pile up' in cultural
layers, one inspiration 'buried' under another. The later
inspiration enfolds the preceding one, the earlier one
becomes the standard cultural assumptions, the status quo
thinking, and gradually loses its power to inspire. We will
examine, in this article and the two following, the worldly
inspirations in the order that they arose and study their
effects on the Church.
Wherever
God revealed himself peoples often responded with
consternation. The witness of Abraham and his descendants
upset the local rulers in Canaan; they preferred the control
that worship of many gods gave them over their subjects.
After the Israelites conquered Canaan, monotheism
imperceptibly spread its influence throughout the Greek
world. In Athens during the fifth century B.C., the
continuing stimulation of monotheistic worship in Israel
gave birth to the famous schools of Socrates, Plato, and
Aristotle. Cultures could not dismiss God, but neither did
they surrender to him.
The first movement: Civilization
Through
the agency of Alexander the Great, the pagans' reaction to
the one God found expression in the all-encompassing notion
of civilizing the earth. Civilization would once for
all silence the difficulties presented by monotheism.
More
than two thousand years later, we find any objection to the
ideal of civilization difficult to understand. Civilization
proclaims that, by using our intellectual and artistic
resources, we may create truth, beauty, adventure, art, and
peace in every country that completely embraces it.[4]
Our language reveals just how totally we take civilization
for granted. If an individual conducts himself in a uncouth
or abnormal fashion, we describe him as "uncivilized". We
also label illiterate societies without a centralized
government as 'uncivilized'. So, what could be wrong with
that?
The
answer: civilization borrowed from true religion the shell
of reverence for the human person without accepting the
heart as well.[5] Societies lacked
the capacity to grasp that people were important because God
considered them precious, the apple of his eye.[6]
If God merely regarded them with distant objectivity, they
were worse than dust. Without God, immortality became a
curse to pagans of all classes and races, and relationships
in this life subject to strife and misunderstanding.
The
civilizing world managed to ghettoize Judaism; Christianity
could not be similarly contained, no matter how strenuous
civilization attempted its suppression. The Roman Empire,
which boasted of its tolerance, just could not live with a
healthy Church. Roman officials would accept the smallest
compromise of faith as sufficient, but the faithful refused
them even that. It mystified educated Romans that Christians
would not throw a few grains of incense to the emperor's
statue, when they themselves did not believe in his
divinity. Actually, Romans believed in nothing with
much fervour -- except civilization.
When
we recognize the conflict between Church and state in the
Roman Empire as a struggle between the civilizers and the
followers of Christ, then the persecutions by 'enlightened'
thinkers like the Emperor Marcus Aurelius are more
understandable. He correctly identified Christianity as a
destabilizing force in Roman society, a way of life which
abhorred the world view of civilization as hollow and
sterile.
Not
everything about civilization was corrupt. From
civilization, the Church gained a more coherent organization
and sense of universality. She enhanced her creativity in
literature, art, and natural law. Civilization encouraged
the 'primitive' Church to mature.
A profound schism
At
the same time, the civilizers generated a profoundly
negative prejudice in the Church. Under the pressure of
civilization, the gentile Church pulled away from the
synagogue's influence between 70 and 100 A.D., especially
when the non-Christian Jews threw Christians out of the
synagogues after the Temple's destruction. This event was
very important for the spreading of the Gospel, but the
Jewish understanding of the Church as a congregation or
assembly of God's people -- always so fundamental to St.
Paul and St. Peter[7] -- began to
fade from ecclesial life by the end of the first
century.
Resistance
among gentile Christians to the civilizing inspiration
greatly diminished with the destruction of the Temple, and
their subsequent expulsion from the synagogues. The need for
a greater hierarchical authority to protect the Church from
false teaching and division tended to aggravate the movement
away from an assembly mentality. Very quickly, a view of the
clergy as the 'teaching Church' and the laity as the
'learning Church' gained ascendancy. In this setting, the
laity lost any sense of their place in the Church's mission.
The laity almost universally failed to develop spiritual
maturity; they accepted passive, even apathetic attitudes,
assumed roles undifferentiated from other members of the
laity, and seldom took responsibility for the overall
welfare of the Church. St. John rejected this non-Jewish
attitude as late as the end of the first century,[8]
but the vision of Church life that he preached did not long
survive his death.[9]
The second movement: Rationalism
Long
before Christ was born, the pagan world grappled with the
incredible revelation, coming out of Israel, that God is One
God. While cultures responded by attempting a worldly utopia
called civilization, great minds also wrestled with the
reality of existence from a human viewpoint. Permenides and
Hereclitus formulated two entirely different theories to
explain existence. Socrates and Plato followed Permenides,
trying to make his theory of Being an acceptable explanation
of reality. Aristotle realized the inadequacy of their work,
taking on himself the monumental task of formulating an
entirely new system.
For
half a millennium these schools of thought were confined to
the discussions of philosophers; during that time, teachers
and the laity desired more 'practical' systems, suitable to
the ideal of civilization. During the third century A.D. a
reaction set in among those parents able to afford a good
education for their children. They demanded systems of
thought able to challenge Christian teaching, and to create
at least a temporary justification for the eastern mystery
religions flooding the Roman Empire. Neoplatonic and
Scholastic (Aristotelian) schools gained prominence, not
only in Athens and Alexandria, but also in Africa, Syria,
and Italy.
Civilization
no longer offered the world a sufficient defence against
God. The world's rebellion now expressed itself in a new
ideal -- rationalism. A rationalist accepted reason
as the only authority in determining one's opinions or
practice.
The
philosophical systems of Greece, augmented and synthesized
by centuries of thought, so overwhelmed the empire that many
in the Church fell under their spell. A dedicated Christian
named Origen rewrote theology from a philosophical
perspective. "Origen's name was so highly esteemed [in
the Church] that when there was question of putting an
end to a schism or rooting out a heresy, appeal was made to
it."[10]
So
stubbornly did philosophers cling to rationalism in
opposition to Christianity that the pious Emperor Justinian
finally closed down their schools in 529. His action proved
unsuccessful in removing rationalism from the minds of the
educated; Justinian himself was no doubt unaware of the
rationalist influence on his own mind. Movements like
rationalism were so insidious they could influence people's
whole approach to life without their so much as being aware
of them.
"In
spite of the Christianization of Byzantium, there remained a
residue of ancient pagan Roman ideas. The Byzantines of this
school often appear so modern to us precisely because they
were permeated with rationalistic anti-ecclesiastical
sentiments. Such men were found most frequently among the
cultured classes, the high dignitaries of Church and
State."[11]
The
Church gained considerably from the impact of rationalism.
Her theologians argued more effectively against heresy, and
offered more systematic explanations of doctrine and
morality. The Church demonstrated more completely how her
teachings could be understood with the mind, subject to
faith.
Nevertheless,
the Church suffered damage from rationalism. Where
rationalism penetrated, it diminished her sense of the
mystery in Christianity. Concepts like 'emotion',
'intuition', and 'revelation' caused growing discomfort,
especially in educated circles. The idea of 'irrational'
became practically synonymous with 'insane'. Unfathomable
doctrines were dissected and 'understood', and truths of the
faith could be sifted through and jettisoned if they failed
to fit the desired theological scheme.
By
600 A.D. the historical stage was set for the terrible
schisms dividing the Church through the next thousand years.
The next article in this series will examine these schisms
and their effects. Accidents of history did not cause the
schisms; the blame must be found in the resistance in men's
hearts. But however much sin
increased, grace was always greater...[12]
The Church remained and prospered through everything.
The
background research and sources for the three articles in
this series is under revision and will be available free of
charge after the third article is published.
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